Ex-spy Litvinenko poisoned twice, inquiry told

A long-awaited inquiry into the death of Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko opened with the revelation that the KGB agent turned Kremlin critic may have been poisoned with radioactive polonium not once — as authorities initially thought — but twice.

The disclosure by lawyer Robin Tam is the latest twist in a saga that includes allegations of state-sponsored assassination and murky events that Tam said “would not disgrace the pages of a thriller.”

Tam, the inquiry’s legal counsel, said evidence suggested that Litvinenko had ingested the highly radioactive isotope polonium-210 in mid-October 2006 and then again about two weeks later.